Daily Yellowstone journal., 1887-03-24
The MOOD OF THE CzAR.
h Possession Of Absolute Power Leads
to a Special Mental Disease.

The Possession OF Absolute Power Leac5
to a Special Mental Disease.
De Quincy. in his wonderful study OF
the early Caesars, the paper in which his
power of suggestive narrative and his con-
troll over the resources of Language are
perhaps seen at their hest. is, SO tospcak,
driven by wonder at the wild williulness
of his subjects TO suggest that all the
Caesars of the Julian house were mad.
Caligula may have been, though his
symptoms, as recorded by Suetonius, are
rather those of delirium tremens; but the
theory which makes of the grand though
sinister statesman. Tiberius. who gave the
Roman monarchy its final impress, a man
Of disordered mind in the ordinary medi-
cal sense. will not readily be accepted as
correct. He was no more mad than
Philip ii, whose private life was much OF
the same kind.
1t would, as we read history, he far
truer to say that power, when really abb
solute, SO absolute that the volltion is
executive and the necessity for self
restraint is unfelt, produces of itself a
special mental disease, which is not in
sanity, because it would disappear with
the power, but has at intervals, like the
passion of children, many of its external
symptoms and effects. Nero, the artist
emperor, who was always seeking the
impossible, and whom the early Chris
tians believed TO be the veritable incarna-
ton of evil. may be said undoubtedly to
have suffered from il: so did one or two
of the Italian tyrants of the Renaissance:
and so. in our Judgment, though il is a
disputable point, did Ivan the Terrible.
Power Of that sort, though it does not al
WAYS iniure the mind-for several of the
Caesars and some of the emperors Of
Delhi We're men of splendid sanity and
judgment-when il happens to fall to a
man predisposed by inherited tendency
or by drink. ur by special solitariness of
nature, undoubtedly weakens the re-
strainiIg force Of the will aud strength
ems impulse until many of his acts
resemble closely the acts of madmen.
Half the great sovereigns Of Asia, il their
private lives were accurately known.
would be seen to have had their Charac-
tiers, 50 to speak, poisoned by power, as
directly as if they had been poisoned with
n of the drugs which temporarily dis.
turb reason.
Drink. wild and continuous drunken
ness with bad brandy. was the predis.
posing cause in Peter the Great. and, it
is believed, in Thecbaw, and probably in
the Emperor Baber, who, wise by day
light. would in the moonlight occupy
himself in jumping from httlement To
battlement of his palace, eighty feet from
the ground. In Gar Paul the predis-
posing cause was probably an insane ten
dency, though that is not quite proved;
and in Alexander III it Is u solitariness
almost beyond example, There is not a
man in the world more deeply to be
pitied than the present emperor Of Russia.
The loneliness OF kings. a LONELINESS natu-
rally resulting from their place, which
hardly admits of friendship and does not
admit of equality, is always terrible. and
is frequently felt by themselves so severely
that they break through all restraints OF
prudence and moral law in order to bt
rid of 1.-THE Spectator.